KOLKATA: The tussle between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP has spread to Tripura as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee seeks to gain a foothold in the Northeastern state with a view to expanding her party’s influence on the national stage ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
After her party’s stellar victory in the recently-held Assembly elections in West Bengal, the Trinamool supremo began sending her trusted lieutenants to the BJP-ruled Tripura with a view to cultivating support base there ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.
Sources in the TMC said, Mamata would deploy the same strategies that helped her win in Bengal. The party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee is scheduled to visit Tripura on Monday. His task is to create a favourable impression for the party among the young voters of the state.
Tripura recently experienced the heat of the TMC-BJP tussle when 23 members of election strategist Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC were detained in the state capital Agartala for purportedly violating Covid-19 guidelines. The team was in Tripura to carry out a survey for the TMC ahead of the elections.
Soon after Kishor’s team was detained, Mamata sent two of her ministers and an MP to Agartala to meet the team. “Our women wing leader and MP Kakali Ghosh Dastidar were among those who went to Agartala. We will find strong women committees in Tripura to take women electorates into confidence. Mamata Banerjee is the face of the women and we enjoyed the support of women voters in the recent Assembly elections,’’ said another TMC leader.
The TMC had attempted to gain ground in Tripura in 2016. A former Congress leader had defected to the party along with some others back then. However, he switched over to the BJP ahead of the Assembly elections in 2018. Two days ago, the TMC got a fresh lease of life after seven Congress functionaries came on board.